In the vertically-reciprocating coating apparatus, the coater is caused to vertically reciprocate and a containing material is sprayed with a predetermined spray pattern from the coater upon objects carried close to the coater by a conveyor. If an object (excluding an inner wall of a booth) other than the objects to be coated is present in a spraying direction of the coater in this vertically-reciprocating coating apparatus, said object is contaminated; thus, it has been made necessary to attach a drive for reciprocating the coater, etc., to an upper or lower portion of the coater. That is, in a conventional vertically-reciprocating coating apparatus, the coater is mounted on a shaft which reciprocates in a vertical direction, and is caused to vertically-reciprocate with a reciprocating motion of this shaft.
This coating method requires a reciprocating drive having a height about 1.2 to 1.5 times greater than an effective range of a vertical reciprocation of the coater, and it has been made necessary to secure the drive on top of a booth or under the floor of the booth. Because of this, there have been problems such as the need of furnishing a building for installing the vertically-reciprocating coating apparatus with a particularly high ceiling, the difficulty of installing said apparatus in a low-ceilinged building, etc. There is also a method of installing said apparatus by means of digging a pit under the floor of the booth, but in this method, the installation place is limited and a problem such as an increase in cost arises. Furthermore, there have been some problems with the conventional vertically-reciprocating coating apparatus, such as the liability of the drive and other parts to get contaminated, the difficulty of maintaining them in good condition, etc.
Particularly, said apparatus has the disadvantage that the drive is contaminated with the spray pattern of the coater and that the coater cannot have a wide effective range of its reciprocation.